The Tension That Transforms Us | with Chris Skidmore

Yeah, I guess we probably have to start with the acknowledgement that myth was, I don't know, maybe is diminished as a form, as a, as a sort of way of understanding the world, as we can see by our language that we have, like the myth of something, um, essentially says that it's false.

So we've e- we've equated in the, in the collective an idea that myth and falsehood go together, but that's just a myth.

And I think that means in the, in the sort of collective it means that it's not factual and not truthful.

Um, and I guess that's the sticky territory of myth, in that it is, you know, it's, I've heard it said that it's a lie that reveals the truth.

That's really difficult for the modern mind that is so, uh, hell bent on the scientific, and hell bent on, like, let's just get to the bottom of things.

What's true and not true, just tell me.

Don't mess around with all that stuff.

You know? Like, just tell me.

Um, but myth gives us lies that reveal the truth, and I think the way that myth does that, and fairytales that we'll get into today as well, which is sort of like fairytales is like a condensed myth in a way.

Like we ta- myth is difficult to get to.

It's always fragmented.

Um, I mean, I guess that might be a good start actually to define it as best that we can, to sort of like wriggle, as you say, wriggle around in the definition of something as broad as myth.

Um, I would say that myth is something that comes out of a collective dreaming process, um, that it's told and retold and retold by people around campfires, and everybody has a turn at it.

Everybody gets a go at it.

Uh, you don't have to be the one who knows to have a go at it.

You just start telling.

Um, and then what's gonna come through is your subjective experience of it, and then somebody else might come through and bang, now they've got their subjective experience of it.

And then if you run that for a few thousand years, or at least maybe a few generations, then what you'll get is the forming and the forming and the reforming of mythic material.

So it's, it's kind of always kind of stemming from a pre-written place, I believe.

Like, it sort of stems from a, a pr- a verbal, um, oratory, often to song place.

You can get a sense of a rhythmic-ness to myth.

Like, there's a rhythm in it and a rhyme in it.

Um, and it's a beat, and it's a song, and it's something that intrinsically humans have always done, and always will do, and will never stop doing.

Like, there's that component of it.

We'll never stop.